Primary Services

Prepaid

Order Form

This individual Report Mercator Advisory Group's Seventh Annual Closed-Loop Prepaid Assessment is available for purchase. This Report is available to members of Mercator Advisory Group’s Prepaid Advisory Service. Please be advised that this Report is normally part of a research and advisory service that provides ongoing support throughout the year. As such, this Report contains significant depth of content that is selected for its strategic importance to our members. (For a description of these services, see our Advisory Services section).

While the Report represents significant analyst time invested, there is no means of our ascertaining if it will fully meet your specific intended purposes. Typically, these Reports form the basis for future discussions with our clients where we are able to fine-tune additional information that we have gathered in the construction of the series of Reports (or locate new information rapidly due to our exclusive focus on gathering information in the payments industry) for specific member needs.

Unfortunately, in fairness to our paying members, we are not able to offer this level of support for a single Report purchase. We will, however, credit any Research Document purchase against the future purchase price of the service should you become a member within 30 days of purchasing the document.

Boston, MA - November 30, 2009 --
The projected growth of the Prepaid Market in general, and the solid
growth within particular prepaid segments, suggests that the Prepaid
Industry will continue to attract new players and investments and will
remain extremely dynamic.

Although
many segments within both the Open and Closed Loop prepaid card markets
have seen lower growth rates in 2008, the fact remains that growth for
Network Branded solutions continue to outpace Closed Loop by a
significant amount and has proven critical in maintaining a positive
overall growth rate for the prepaid market as a whole.

Several significant adjustments have been made to this year's forecast to reflect increased reporting from prepaid processors. Most
importantly several Open Loop segments have had future growth rates
substantially increased to reflect the actual growth measured in 2008. Based
on our adjustments Mercator Advisory Group now predicts that the Open
Loop market will exceed the size of the Closed Loop market in 2012 by
$41.8 billion.

This
greatly anticipated report finds that the total load volume across all
33 Prepaid Market Segments, including all Open and Closed Solutions,
will reach $525.8 billion by 2012.

The Prepaid Market Forecast 2009 to 2012
report is the final of three annual Mercator Advisory Group reports
that thoroughly benchmark the entire Prepaid Industry. This report provides a growth forecast for all 33 Prepaid Market Segments, including load volumes and cards issued.

The Prepaid Market Forecast 2009 to 2012
report delivers significant data that addresses the comparative growth
rates of different segments and the forecasted future growth based on
Mercator's exclusive insights and analysis of these segments.

"When
the prepaid market is evaluated on a segment-by-segment basis, it
becomes clear that there are far more markets that are expanding or
thriving in this economy than there are segments experiencing negative
growth. Mercator Advisory Group expects this will continue to be the
case as the industry moves forward unless legislation is passed that
negatively impacts current market conditions," comments Tim Sloane, Director for Mercator Advisory Group's Prepaid Advisory Service.

Highlights of the report include:

The Open Loop market will exceed the Closed Loop market in total dollars loaded as early as 2012.

Based
on these adjustments, Mercator Advisory Group now predicts that the
Open Loop market will exceed the size of the Closed Loop market in 2012
by $41.8 billion.

Based
on other reports that argue the prepaid market is smaller than reported
here, Mercator Advisory Group redoubled efforts to collect data from
processors and received input from several new sources. With
regrets to Federal Reserve Board (FRB) statements to the contrary,
every additional data point we received indicates that the open loop
market is larger than we have reported, not smaller.

Due
to corrections that increased the size of the Open Loop market, the
Total Prepaid Market size in 2011, which was forecast at $362.3 billion
last year, is now forecast to be $427.5 billion.

In
2008, $8.7 billion was loaded onto GPR products and with this forecast
we estimate that the market load in 2010 will be $36 billion and
continue to escalate out to 2012.

One of the 93 Exhibits included in this report:

- See more at: http://dev.mercatoradvisorygroup.com/Templates/Report.aspx?id=1199#sthash.E1GUnI6r.dpuf

Boston, MA -- The Closed-Loop prepaid market grew by 7% in 2009, totaling $205.39 billion in dollars loaded onto cards. This market now accounts for more than 62% of all prepaid purchases, while the Open-Loop market, had loads totaling only $124.6 billion in 2009, accounting for 38% of prepaid purchases.

Digital Content, Government and Telecommunications are the three market categories most responsible for driving the increase in Closed-Loop market share , with growth rates of 16%, 19% and 10% respectively.The Digital Content category was driven to a large extent by the Digital Media segment that includes Apple Inc. and other music and video prepaid products.The Government segment was driven by government assistance programs that saw a significant increase in aid disbursement due to a bad economy leading to regrettable fact that more people now meet the assistance program guidelines.

Note, however, that as Mercator Advisory Group predicted, not all Closed-Loop segments saw growth.For instance, dollars loaded onto Closed-Loop cards used for consumer incentives fell 8% from 2008 levels and the Closed-Loop Gift Card market segment continued its slow growth at 3%.

"Mercator Advisory Group has once again found that prepaid is the best payments market to be in during a recession," Tim Sloane, Vice President of Client Services and Director of Mercator Advisory Group's Prepaid Advisory Service and author of the report comments. "Growth continues across most segments of the market and likely will continue whichever way the economy goes."

Mercator has identified the solutions that are poised to kick-start the Closed-Loop gift card market back into high growth mode.While virtual cards and mobile wallets have only just started to penetrate the market Mercator Advisory Group is confident that properly implemented these technologies will enable Closed Loop Gift Cards to compete aggressively with Open Loop cards.

"While virtual cards and mobile wallets are a novelty today, these technologies will be instrumental in driving growth for the closed loop gift market over the next ten years," Sloane says. "Although the impact of these technologies will first be felt in the B2B incentives market where it enables personalized messages combined with instant availability, the technology will ultimately be instrumental in integrating Prepaid Closed Loop programs to consumer loyalty programs."

Highlights of the Report Include:

The total load for all 26 prepaid segments in 2009 (Open & Closed) was $330.03 billion, a $60.74 billion increase over the $269.29 billion load in 2008 an increase of 23%.

There were $205.39 billion loaded onto Closed-Loop prepaid cards in 2009, an increase of 7% over the 2008 load of $191.78.

Closed-Loop Gift Cards used for Consumer Incentives fell by 8% in 2009, to $4.41 billion, a dramatic decline from 2008's increase of 19%.

The Digital Content Category had another great year growing to $9.29 billion, for a growth of 16%.Of this Digital Media, driven by Apple and other music prepaid products, accounted for $5.55 billion, for an 18% growth rate, despite a poor 2009 holiday season.

The Gift Card market segment only grew by $2.14 billion, an increase of 3%.

Government nutrition programs had rapid load growth of 19%, to $45.87 billion, driven by a bad economy and more people meeting assistance program guidelines.

One of 13 exhibits in this report.

This report is 27 pages and is accompanied by 13exhibits.

Members of Mercator Advisory Group have access to this report as well as the upcoming research for the year ahead, presentations, analyst access and other membership benefits.

For more information and media inquiries, please call Mercator Advisory Group's main line: (781) 419-1700 or send E-mail to info@mercatoradvisorygroup.com.

About Mercator Advisory Group Mercator Advisory Group is the leading, independent research and advisory services firm exclusively focused on the payments and banking industries. We deliver pragmatic and timely research and advice designed to help our clients uncover the most lucrative opportunities to maximize revenue growth and contain costs. Our clients range from the world's largest payment issuers, acquirers, processors, merchants and associations to leading technology providers and investors.